[News] Palestine support - UAW 2865 votes to support BDS!

[Anti-Imperialist News]

The UAW2865 just became the first major US labor union to endorse BDS 
through a membership vote. The vote was 65% in favor, 35% against, a 30 
point margin!!! 52% of members also personally pledged to adhere to the 
academic boycott of Israeli academic institutions! Complete info on the 
vote result is here: *http://www.uaw2865.org/2014-bds-vote/*

Submitted by the BDS Caucus

Friends,

When structures of oppression receive our unwilling financial support, 
we must take a stand.
Palestinian university teachers, labor unions, and students under 
Israeli occupation have called for our
solidarity. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions resolution will push 
back against our complicity as
union members, UC employees, and students from apartheid in Palestine.

The BDS call, made by Palestinian grassroots organizations, aims to 
restore Palestinians’ human rights
for: 1) Refugees forced to flee Palestine in 1948 and subsequently due 
to Israeli military violence and
ethnic cleansing who are barred from returning to their lands; 2) Those 
facing the 47-year military
occupation and ongoing land confiscation in the West Bank and blockade 
in Gaza; and 3) Palestinians
inside Israel facing second-class citizenship due to over 50 ethnically 
discriminatory laws that heavily
restrict access to property ownership, education, and other resources 
for Palestinians.

By voting YES, we defend steadfastly the universal value of human 
dignity and equality. We maintain
that Palestinian lives are as valuable as Israeli lives. We demand an 
end to the occupation of
Palestinian lands; we support full equality for Palestinians in Israel; 
and refugees’ right of return as
stipulated by international law and U.N. Resolution 194.

By voting YES, we honor our union’s commitment to political action and 
community mobilization.
We will continue educating our communities of racism against Arabs, 
Muslims, Jews and people of
Middle Eastern background, and stand against all forms of 
discrimination. We continue Local 2865’s
solidarities with other anti-racist, anti-colonial labor and student 
movements globally; thus our
opponents’ claim that we’re singling out Israel is patently false. 
Rather than dictating the form of our
solidarity to any aggrieved people, we must try to express it in 
whatever form those people deem
necessary to better their conditions, whether boycotts, sympathy 
strikes, petitions, or organizing
actions to support students and workers from Chile to South Africa to 
workers here. Yet Israel
constantly requests that we excuse its apartheid practices when we would 
do so for no other country.

By voting YES, we affirm our solidarity with all those striving for 
peace with justice for all the land’s
inhabitants. We join student governments of UCSD, UCI, UCR, UCB, UCSC, 
and UCLA in calling
for divestment from Israeli apartheid. We stand by members of all 
national origins and religions who
demand a situation where all people live with dignity regardless of 
religion, ethnicity, or other identity.
Some who stand to lose their privilege argue we must not meddle in 
“controversial affairs”. Some
argued this during Jim Crow segregation: they were wrong! Some argued 
this to support South African
apartheid: they were wrong! Some argue this to support raising tuition 
and entrenching education as an upper-class, racist privilege: they are 
wrong!

Years from now, when peace with justice is under way in Palestine, you 
will look back and think, “I
made the right decision. I stood in solidarity during the most difficult 
times.”
Friends, it’s time to finally be counted on the right side of history! 
Vote YES on BDS!

Read the ballot here:
http://www.uaw2865.org/wp-content/uploads/BDSSampleBallot.pdf



-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20141211/1988489b/attachment.htm>